I turn to Yenyen. Maybe he can play bad cop for me and shoot this whole ridiculous get-up down in flames. Like me, he’s also staring openmouthed at their fascinators. He extends an arm and touches Fourth Aunt’s dragon as gingerly as though expecting it to come to life and take a chunk out of his hand.
“Amazing,” he says.
I sidle over to him and whisper, “Don’t you mean ‘ridiculous’？”
His gaze flicks over to me and I see belatedly that the expression he’s wearing isn’t so much shock as it is wonderment. “Look at the craftsmanship. The scales, those eyes!”
“You mean how they follow you around the room?” I can’t help but shudder.
“It’s called the Mona Lisa effect,” Yenyen says.
My mother and aunts preen.
“You do realize he’s calling the dragons Mona Lisa, not you,” I point out. And is probably a petty thing to say, but really now. There is no way in hell I can let this happen. I can’t have them meeting Nathan’s parents wearing komodo freaking dragons on their heads.
“Okay, yang bener ya. Serious time,” Big Aunt says, straightening her back and smoothing down the front of her ruffled skirt. “What you think, Meddy?”
I tear my eyes from the tops of their heads to her face, and that’s when I realize it: Big Aunt is nervous. It’s the first time I’ve seen that vulnerable look on her face. Well, I guess I have seen it one other time before, and that was when she had to move the body of a man I’d just killed. The sight of naked worry and hope on her face makes my chest squeeze painfully. My eyes move from Big Aunt to the others and find all of them wide-eyed with anticipation. Ma is wringing her hands, and Second Aunt looks like she’s one mean comment away from plunging into a Tai Chi pose. Fourth Aunt is studying her nails, but now and again, she steals glances my way, and I know then that she’s just as nervous as the others.
Well, crap.